Shared jokes whose origins are now lost to time, allegiances that shift almost imperceptibly but catastrophically, kindnesses extended and rebuffed, and musings that swing from the mundane to the profound and back again. All this is contained in Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves, which comes to Belvoir in a production first seen at the Old Fitz last year. A finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, it’s a rich portrait of a girls’ indoor soccer team (‘The Wolves’ of the title), capturing all the awkwardness, pain and joy of soon to be shed adolescence.

The cast of The Wolves. Photo © Brett Boardman

Sensitively and agilely directed by Jessica Arthur, the first thing you notice is how the audience is intentionally distanced from the characters by a black net, which runs all around the patch of turf they lay claim to. It’s an important distance, because it’s only in the company of other young women that our characters feel able to speak and act as they do. The occasional intrusion of the outside, adult world – the appearance of their perpetually hungover coach, or a parent – sees marked shifts in behaviour...